Young and Beautiful
by GeorgiaMaeSixx
Summary: Tom has gone, Daisy is alone. Gatsby is dead. Nick is back to reveal the deep secret he tried to ignore. There is an opportunity to rekindle, but obstacles still face them.


As always, I don't own The Great Gatsby or any of the characters involved. They belong to the brilliant F Scott Fitzgerald and also based on the adaptation by Baz Luhrmann.

* * *

I had never seen the snow fall so gracefully than it did on the night Gatsby had died. After cleaning up the hall, and trying to avoid the careful taunting of alcohol, I had gone straight home to once again wonder about the house I lived in the shadow of. Those decadent nights full of people and lights had come to an end a few months ago, and I had no desire to remain in West Egg. But I had that incling, a nagging voice in the back of my subconscious mind that beckoned me to stay. That voice…that confidence. It could only be one man. A man who had both astounded and lied to me on several occasions in his exasperated hope of winning back a prize he had long lost.

I knew that my alcoholism had contorted my vision, but I had seen Jay Gatsby's final resting place. He could not be alive. Not naturally. The green light had blared its last beam of Daisy. Gatsby himself had told me once that if Daisy left, he had nothing to live for.

But a light came on in that desolate house of drunken memories. If memories had remained true, then nobody had lived there. The young and beautiful people who descended on the house every Saturday and left without so much as a quiet goodbye had gone back to their lives and had forgotten. I could not forget.

Daisy and Tom returned a month after the car accident in which Daisy had inadvertently killed Myrtle, Tom's mistress. Their daughter looked more and more like my cousin everyday, though I had only met her once, and was under strict instructions to not mention Jay Gatsby, James Gatts or anything to do with that era of Daisy's past.

"I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

Inspecting Jay's mansion, looking up at the walks that held so many memories of bootlegged liquor and jazz music, I found myself overwhelmed with nostalgia. That had every effect on me, making me feel faint, upset, hopeful and also indifferent. Yet, I had to go. New York was nothing but a haunted graveyard to me. The stocks had crashed and I was not only out of my mind, but out of a job, and out of a future.

A figure passed by the window, with that familiar suit, and suddenly I was back in one of his roaring parties. Maybe Gatsby had faked his death. That last string of hope that he was holding on to, hoping that with Daisy gone, he could go and live a more successful life. No matter how much he tried to hide it, she was his life force, so I really did not know what to think.

I figured that the only path forward was to return after some time away.

Those long, institutionalised months passed by and I had chosen to use my therapy to write my account of events. My doctor had lost all hope in my words, blaming them on drunken fantasies. He blamed my inner anger releases for the underlying violence in my tale. I would find myself staring out of the window at the snow, rubbing my stubble, wondering as to how my life would've been if Gatsby had been with Daisy.

My life was the pawn in his chess game, though. I was the one who enabled them to meet, but then my role was rather insignificant. It was as I was wondering when I received the phone call. My calm demeanour when I answered was met with the hysterical cries of a woman.

"Nick, darling? It…it's Tom. He left this morning. Found someone over in another city and took my beautiful baby with him. I'm all alone, staring at the dying mansion across the lake." Daisy cried down the phone, her voice shrill and exhausted, as though she had been crying for a while. Jordan took the phone off of her, giving my ears a rest.

"Get here as soon as you can. I have news, of sorts. You've missed a lot, Nick Carraway."

The phone was put down after that, and without so much as a thought about the suspicious and desperate phone call, I packed my little possessions and told the doctor what had happened. Family emergency. I did not particularly want to go, and regret soon clouded my mind like an unfamiliar drunken haze, but it was already too late and I was on the train.

All I could remember was my father's advice to always see the best in people, but even I had a limit. Tom and Daisy were reckless people, always hurting those around them and breaking whatever they touched. We passed the industrial wasteland and those disembodied eyes that burrowed into my soul, and East Egg greeted me once more, though the stern atmosphere that followed Tom around had ceased and the lingering feel was sadness.

Daisy was laying on the sofa in the room where I had first seen her on my last visit, but the flowing white curtains had gone and the night sky surrounded the room, bringing with it a cool chill. "Nick." She sniffed, opening her arms to me for a tight hug. "Jordan needs to talk to you. I dare not think what about, but she insists it's important."

With that, I retreated from that room and walked into the dining room, to find Jordan there. She still intimidated me, but I had to admit to myself that I had missed her in my time away, and I knew that feeling was not replicated by her. She looked up at me; her piercing eyes staring deep into mine.

"Nick. This was left for you…" she began, handing me an invitation, one that was all too familiar. "We have a party to go to."


End file.
